I was in a bookstore recently. That’s right, not online, a real bookstore with humans working in it. It was a small place in my neighborhood that so far had managed to avoid getting stomped out of existence by the ruthless Godzilla Bezos. On one particular shelf I found many of the books I had read in high school, Orwell’s Animal Farm, The Lord of the Flies, Steinbeck’s The Pearl, Catcher in the Rye, and the one that has really stayed with me over the years, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. When I questioned her, the clerk affirmed that they were still reading these books in high school today.
A Separate Peace takes place at a boarding school in the 1940s during World War II. It’s about the relationship between this kid Gene and his best friend, a popular, charismatic All-American boy named Phineas, who everyone calls “Finny.” As I recall, Finny takes Gene under his wing, raising the social status of someone who might otherwise have been largely ignored.
When I read that my junior year I thought, “Phineas! That’s Jesus! And I’m Gene!”
Gene loves Finny. Finny is his role model. He wishes he could be as naturally attractive and charismatic as Finny.
I may be getting some of this wrong, but this is what I remember. One day they climb a tree on campus. Finny is sitting high up on a branch. Gene is sitting at the base of the branch. In one fleeting moment something comes over Gene as he watches Finny out there on the limb, carefree, courageous. He shakes the branch. It’s not a violent shake. It’s ever so slight. A small gesture. But it’s enough to make Finny lose his balance, fall out of the tree, and break his leg.
It’s a serious break that puts the graceful, athletic Finny in a cast and on crutches for the rest of the story. As I recall, Finny never blames Gene for making him fall. He doesn’t even suspect that Gene was the reason. Gene feels tremendous guilt for disabling Finny but can’t conjure the courage to confess. They remain good friends until eventually the injury causes a blood clot to travel up Finny’s leg and stop his heart.
In spite of Gene’s love for him, he recognizes that he was also a bit jealous that Finny was such a golden boy. This jealous impulse bubbled up for only a brief moment, but that moment was enough to change both of their lives forever.
Reading that story made me wonder if I was jealous of Jesus. Would we ever have such a moment? Would I one day be tempted to assert my own power in relationship to Jesus and with a small shudder of my wrist ever so slightly shake that branch?
***
Over the years, people have asked me if I thought Jesus was gay. It’s true he had a lot of close female friends and seemed to relate to girls in a way that most adolescent boys couldn’t. And he never to my knowledge had a “girlfriend” per se. Senior year, he did go to four proms. Lisa invited him to her prom. And in return, Jesus took Lisa to our prom (Paulette and I double-dated with them). But then he got invited by a couple of other girls he knew in grade school to their proms. Nobody went to more proms than Jesus that year. No, I don’t think Jesus was gay. But I don’t think he was particularly interested in sex, either. It was more like he had other things to do, bigger fish to fry. Maybe that’s why in the end he hung out with so many fishermen.
That was another thing about Jesus. He never felt the need to sit at the “cool kids’” table. A lot of times in the cafeteria, I’d try to direct us to where the so-called “cool kids” were having lunch. More often than not, Jesus instead would seek out some kid who was sitting alone. He’d approach with his tray and say, “Do you mind if we sit with you?” like it would be a privilege to sit with the kid no one else was sitting with. We’d sit down and sure as shit pretty soon others would drift over wondering what all the hearty conversation and laughter was about.
That’s why Jesus didn’t need to sit at the cool kids’ table. Wherever he sat became the cool kids’ table.
Senior year was such a blur. We were all thinking about college. Except Jesus. He certainly had the grades. I thought maybe he might enter a seminary, because he did talk a lot about spiritual things, not the sci-fi hocus pocus of most religions. That didn’t seem to interest him as much as the stuff about how you’re supposed to behave in the world. Morality. Right and wrong. Shit like that. It made sense, especially after I heard much later the story about when he was a kid, about ten years old, and his parents took him to some religious retreat or something, and Jesus disappeared. His mom and dad lost track of him. Apparently, they were checking some things out in the gift shop and when they turned around, Jesus was gone.
They were horrified. It’s not like “Home Alone” where you’re trying to keep track of fifteen kids in some madhouse mansion, and you’re on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean and realize you left little Kevin behind. Jesus was their only begotten son. You don’t find this kid; you’re going to have social services on your ass.
Mary and Joseph are looking everywhere. Mary searches the movie theater. Joseph checks out the water slide. Jesus is nowhere to be found. Finally, they rush into the chapel to ask God for help and guess who they find? Little ten-year-old Jesus. At first, they don’t see him. They just hear his voice. Because the place is filled with ministers who are gathered around in a circle listening to this kid talk about the Bible. Jesus knew the Bible inside out, and he’s busting a lot of these guys for cherry-picking certain stuff that justifies their believing whatever they want to believe so they can do whatever they want to do. They’re spellbound because this wunderkind has an answer for everything. They can’t stump him. Not everyone was so appreciative, though. He was giving them a sort of first draft Sermon on the Mount. It turns out, later some of those clergymen wanted to shut him up about that. A lot of what he was saying about peace and mercy and humility and the poor and earthly possessions threatened their bottom line. At least that’s my theory of the case.
But Jesus didn’t go to seminary. Maybe he felt he had more to teach them than they had to teach him. Truth is he probably couldn’t afford college. Or maybe they thought it wasn’t worth the debt that comes with going to college. I went off to Yale and eventually became a lawyer, public interest stuff mostly, not corporate law. I attribute that to Jesus’s influence on me.
We lost track of each other not long after graduation. Joseph had died, and they moved away. I had heard that Jesus was knocking around supporting himself doing carpentry work. Someone once told me he sang in a band for a little while but that it didn’t last long. I didn’t know he could sing, but I could see it. I could definitely picture him fronting a band.
Everybody knows the other parts of the story by now, his birth, his career, his death. It’s all been told a million times in a million ways by a million people. Everyone has their own Jesus story. Everybody thinks they know him. These are my recollections of the years of his life not so well-chronicled. It seems like we know the history of every single minute The Beatles were together, but for Jesus there are some big holes in the middle. I hope I’ve filled some of that gap.
Which brings me to the last time I saw Jesus. It was a few days after graduation. All the hoopla and parties had subsided. Jesus thought it would be fun to take a day hike. So, we filled our backpacks with trail mix and water and headed up to a place called North Rock. It was a vigorous three mile hike up a relatively steep hill that ended on a flat promontory overlooking our small suburb. It would have made a great make-out destination if you could have driven a car up there, but the only way to get there was on foot up a winding trail of switchbacks.
We talked the whole way up. Or I should say, mostly I talked. Jesus listened. I was very excited about a book I was reading called “The Fountainhead,” by this author I had recently discovered named Ayn Rand. I was only about a third of the way through, but that didn’t stop me from gushing authoritatively about the characters and concepts. I regaled Jesus about how it was actually morally good to be selfish and that the world needs strong, heroic individuals in a society that allows them free reign to be productive without the weak and unproductive banding together to drag them down. I’d brought along my paperback version – the hardback was too heavy to carry – and read him some passages as we huffed up the trail. Jesus seemed dubious but seeing how excited I was, indulged my enthusiasm and promised to take a look. I never did finish the book. It turned into a tremendous slog. And the sex scenes weren’t even that good. A few years later, I grew out of Ayn Rand, realizing my fervor for those ideas was just a post-adolescent phase in a young person’s search for clarity and meaning, for some sort of direction in life.
Because like so many people my age, I wanted to change the world. I just had no idea how.
At the top of the hill, we looked out over the town at the tiny cars moving down the streets like toys on tracks. Jesus stood at the very edge of the high cliff. He was in a quiet, contemplative mood. He may have already sensed that these would be our last moments together. Maybe he was thinking about his “hour” that was yet to come. I noticed the toes of his sandals hanging slightly over the edge. And I have to admit the question crossed my mind, “What if I pushed him?”
I quickly banished that question back to the dark recesses, ashamed it had even occurred to me.
Instead, I stood right on the edge next to him and looking out over the sprawling horizon asked, “How can little people like us change the world?”
He lowered his head and said he wasn’t sure. The only thing he was sure of was that you couldn’t change the world if you worried too much about what other people thought of you. I instantly flashed back to the first time we met at that wedding reception and his mom said, “What do you care what other people think?”
I roll that around in my head whenever I remember my old friend, Jesus. He’s been very misunderstood through the years. And a lot of bad things have been done in his name, things I’m sure would have made him very sad. And angry. He was someone who certainly didn’t worry what other people thought of him. And he did change the world. He did it by making other people worry about what he thought of them.
That’s probably why they crucified him.
We hung out on that rock for a little while longer, munching our trail mix, neither of us speaking. Finally, I broke the silence by making some joke about the first time we met when he changed all that water into wine and how we missed a huge business opportunity to make a shit ton of money.
“With all that cash,” I said, “We could have already changed the world.”
He laughed. I always liked making Jesus laugh. It was a generous laugh. We stood up to head back. I took one last swig from my canteen, choked and gasped. I did what must have looked like a cartoon spit take.
I looked at Jesus with watery eyes and in a rasping voice said, “What did you do!? I coughed, “Dude, that’s like pure grain alcohol!”
Jesus just winked at me
And headed down the hill.
Skro, this was great. We need Win to read it. You are good. 😇
You could have lied and I would have believed you'd gone to seminary school, just fyi.